Spring/Summer 2015
Pollen
I wish there were no such things
as wishes but each day I grow
more familiar with all
that I might never have:
children who will remember
that my memory is Swiss
gone soft; a wife who smiles
when my jokes go South;
a home where my thoughts
can loosen their ties and belch.
Hour after hour I drag
fake enthusiasm to interviews,
appointments, until every day
seems secondhand.
Sometimes when half asleep
I’m a sunflower
swarmed by honey bees;
Soon I wake
to arrange my effects, dissolve
in the mouth
of the city.
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Austin Wallace is a former teacher who now devotes his time to the disability rights movement. His poems have been published in BlazeVox, Daily Dose of Lit, and Three Line Poetry.